One-Room Schoolhouse
Marion Naifeh’s account, written for the Foreign Service Journal, of what it was like being part of the smallest U.S. embassy in the entire world, the new embassy in Baida, Libya, a tiny city of less than 2,000 people, and only four expatriot children. That meant homeschooling her own two children, Steven and Carolyn.
The Last Missionary in China
Naifeh’s father, B. W. Lanphear, was the last of the Shanghai Dicocese of the Protest American Chuch Mission scheduled to leave the People’s Republic of China. He never did; he died in Shanghai on July 4, 1951. This biography by his daughter is a dramatic and touching tribute to this extraordinary man.
Foreign Service
Naifeh's Foreign Service is a white-knuckle autobiography written with such modesty, that you might forget it recounts one of the most fascinating unsung lives of a generation. From her birth in China to Yankee Missionaries through dozens of international postings, Naifeh tells her story with the honest voice of a suburban housewife, mother, and teacher.
Available on Amazon
Finding My Mother: The Red Box
Naifeh’s Finding My Mother: The Red Box is the gripping story of a girl who loses her mother within weeks of being born in 1928 — and who learns almost nothing about her for almost 90 years, not until a red box full of memorabilia arrives unexpectedly in the mail. And the mother she finds is an altogether remarkable woman: a bold and adventurous traveler, a gifted writer and photographer, and an important early leader of the feminist movement in China.